America 2040
by Nymph Du Pave
Summary: One shot stand alone. AU, Future Fic, CLex, R for Violence. America 2040 is very different from the home we all know now. It's dark and scary and there's no future to look toward. Written for The Great Title Challenge.


TITLE: America

AUTHOR: Nymph Du Pave

FANDOM: Smallville

PAIRING: Oh, come on. It's me. Who do you think? CLEX!!

RATING: R for violence

SUMMARY: When the future's not looking good, don't look to the future.

DISCLAIMER: The WB, DC Comics, MillarGoughInk, Tolin, Robbins, and Davola along with whomever else own this wonderful show. The Muse controls these fingers. I do have a couple of bucks in that jar on top of my fridge. Can I buy Michael Rosenbaum? Just for a while?

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a future fic written for my own challenge (heehee). Very AU, pretty depressing.

FEEDBACK: Please read and review, i so need my crack.

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**America 2040  
by Nymph Du Pave**  
  
Too many people lost in too few years. Darkness looms outside, a constant companion and a friend of no one. The humans cannot live without the sun and the Kryptonians are powerless without it. We have all turned into slugs without a purpose.  
  
We are all dying slowly.  
  
So many years that I have lived. I look in the mirror and I am frustrated with what I see. I turned 25 and stopped aging. I have scars from the wars, from the battles I have led, but not a wrinkle to be found.  
  
And he's dying.  
  
I rinse the blood from another washcloth, watching with a sick fascination as the lifeline of this man goes down my porcelain sink- a rare commodity nowawdays- and through the veins of the sewer system.  
  
In 2001 I turned twenty one, met a young man that would form my destiny and almost died more times than I can remember in that and the following years. In 2005 I turned 25 and left Smallville for good. I got into politics right away and in 2020 I was elected Governor of Metropolis. By that time I had logged about 15 years fighting with Superman and being enraged by Clark Kent's continuous articles on me and my activities. Opening the Daily Planet was a nightmare for me, and every time it yanked my heartstrings to see someone once so close be so very far away and disgusted by me.  
  
It wasn't until recently that I found just how hard it was for him to write those articles.  
  
I throw the stained towel to the side and bend down further over the sink, waiting for the sickness in my stomach to subside either through patience or though the contents joining Clark's blood.  
  
At the thought of Clark bleeding and vulnerable I let it all go. The dietary substitutes that I and everyone else currently lives on don't lend much to toss, so I end up dry-heaving for the most part.  
  
I hear a weak voice call out and it makes me even sicker. This man with which I share such a very complicated relationship, this man who has always been the strong one, the fighter, the better is now dying and leaving a perfectly healthy me in his wake.  
  
Everyone around me is dying and I don't know why I can't join them. Join _him_. My Clark. Because that is what we are back to. During our lives we were reduced to Clark Kent: Reporter/Superman: Hero VS Lex Luthor: Scientist, Politician. But now with our deaths close on the horizon, with the wars gone and the mending failed, we are just Clark and Lex. And I can still see that farmhouse, long gone, with the barn that Clark and I spend so many hours in.  
  
I am standing over him now. The help was afraid to touch him; he is Kryptonian and that fact alone had them seething with fear and anger. No one believes in Superman anymore. They believe he was a spy meant to bring our guard down. Some children have never even heard of his name.  
  
I lay beside him and shudder from the cold leaking inside. He is beneath several blankets and can barely keep his eyes open to look at me.  
  
"Dormire, mio amore." I say. For some reason it soothes him when I speak in Italian. Italian and Russian.  
  
"I don't want to sleep," he manages. It sounds like a croak. "I have bad dreams."  
  
I hold back tears. He is so like the Clark I once knew. But both of our eyes are haunted with the pain of lives that weigh on us every day. Normal humans have killed themselves for less.  
  
In 2024 I became president. It was the same year that we were invaded by the Kryptonians. It was weird for once being on the same side as Superman. At least for a while. Clark tried to fight them with us, but they had power over him. Red power on a gold chain. He was taken over and fought, not only us but them as well until he reached the top. Until he was their king and our Devil.  
  
I would sometimes double over from the pain of it. Seeing Clark beyond all evil I had previously known was something that kept me in tears, that kept me angry, but not at him, never at him. Even when he came to the White House and killed my senior staff, gave me the single vally that mars my face and throat, and raped and murdered my beloved wife. It wasn't him.  
  
It was that goddamn necklace. My wife fought and exposed it by accident, while trying to claw herself away from him. When he was through with her I remember him walking over to me and clearing the guards from the room.  
  
_He grabbed hold of the Civil War sword above the mantel and walked toward me, an unfamiliar darkness in his once gorgeous eyes. I haven't been this close to him in years.  
  
I can't stop the tears in my eyes for Helen, but I look to him, determined to finally say what I've never had to courage to. "I love you."  
  
He stops dead in his tracks. "What?"  
  
I fall to my knees, seeing the necklace gleaming. It is actually a mixture of red, white and blue kryptonite. I cannot believe the irony there, that our national colors mixed creates this insanely evil version of Clark. Through my years of testing I had found that the white and blue stones did nothing to him, at least not from the distances that I tested it from.  
  
The mixture of the three must be the cause of this evil self.  
  
"What did you say?"  
  
"I said I love you. No matter what you do. Because this is not you, Clark."  
  
"Damn right, Luthor." He slits my tender throat with a blade that has not drawn a drop of blood for more than a hundred and fifty years. "The name is Kal."  
  
I fall to the floor holding my throat but I know that it's too late. My luck has finally run out. There is no pain. Just a queasy feeling and a warm numbness.  
  
Kal leans over me and smiles. It's not the right smile to die to, it's not Clark's smile and I try to block it out with my hand. My aim is off and my arm goes limp. My fingers hang on something that I cannot feel. I can see however. It has landed around his necklace.  
  
I yank with what little power I have left and pass out.  
  
_  
  
I reach out and smooth his hair down. I too am a little afraid to touch him; not for his race but for his condition. He is so very fragile.  
  
I don't know how I lived. I don't know what happened after. All I know is I woke up almost three weeks later in a cave-like basement with Clark and thirteen humans. Clark had changed his appearance radically. He had shaved his head, grown facial hair and was wearing contacts. He was going by "Kevin" and his eyes were deep and sad.  
  
He only spoke when he had to for the next two or three years. Then bombs flew everywhere and people started dying in droves. The nukes were dropped left and right and Clark would fly us out if we had to. He would offer it for everyone but when they learned he was kryptonian...  
  
Simply put, they didn't want to go with him.  
  
Finally the sun shone no more. The skies were covered in the filth of our bloody wars and no one could leave. The Kryptonians lost all their power and the fighting got nastier. Dead bodies litter the grounds below and around.  
  
We are safe nowhere and the fighting grows closer.  
  
"I don't want to die alone."  
  
"Moriamo da solo. Ci è no altro."  
  
He starts to cry. I don't want him to die like this, I want to be with him. I hate it that the stab wound is killing him, his immune system nothing without the sun. I hear the fighting growing nearer and I shut my eyes.  
  
"Lex, please." I look up. I don't know what he wants but I can tell his time is running up fast. A few more minutes at the most.  
  
Decades of death have made me an expert.  
  
An idea forms, one that I have had a million times but have never had the courage to proceed with. But if Clark can die by the hand of some ignorant human with a knife, then I can die by my own hand, holding him.  
  
I smile. "Non morirete da solo. Morirete con me. In miei bracci."  
  
_You will not die alone. You will die with me. In my arms._  
  
He smiles. He does not know that I am going to kill myself. He just thinks I will hold him until he stops breathing, until there is no more him.  
  
But without him I have no reason to be here, no reason to fight. Nothing to love.  
  
I strip down to nothing and slip into bed holding him from behind. It's an odd twist. I used to be the little spoon.  
  
"I'm going away now, Lex."  
  
I cannot keep my tears from falling. This is beyond anything I have ever felt, the stomach-shaking sorrow and the mind-reeling relief. This is it. This is the end. Finally.  
  
"I love you," he whispers.  
  
I grab the knife underneath the pillow, once there for protection. "I love you two, Clark."  
  
I press the blade against my wrist and see the ribbon of red release from it's pale chamber. I ignore the sting and wrap my arms around Clark. There is nothing worse then knowing he will not be there in mere seconds, that is body will be an empty shell of the man I once loved.  
  
There is nothing better then knowing I won't be there either.


End file.
